Obama recently told some schoolchildren in his country that he would love to hang out with the Father of Our Nation, enjoying a no-fuss dinner. “You know [Gandhi] is a real hero of mine,” he told the kids.
US president Barack Obama is not bound by India’s unwritten injunction to worship the Mahatma. Since he is not forced to show cold political correctness, he is able to explain with frank admiration why he thinks the Mahatma is cool. Obama recently told some schoolchildren in his country that he would love to hang out with the Father of Our Nation, enjoying a no-fuss dinner. “You know [Gandhi] is a real hero of mine,” he told the kids.
“Now, it would probably be a really small meal because he didn’t eat a lot.” In India, the frugality is elevated to the unreachable sanctum of saintliness. Who locks up Gandhiji in the daunting layers of quasi-divinity? The politicians. It is a tempting expedient for our country’s leaders: make us believe that Gandhiji cannot be an inspiration because he embodies perfection.
In Delhi in 1984 and in Gujarat in 2002, murderous mobs cooperated in violent movements to brutalise the cliché that India abides by Gandhiji’s principles of tolerance and humanity. The rapes, the burnings, and the stabbings did not discourage Bapu-worship. Indians keep their Gods out of everyday transactions of corruption, casteist prejudice, and power. And as our leaders remind us, Gandhiji is like god not a hero.
So as Gandhiji was moved from the group of great humans and dispatched to a distant pantheon, he became an inaccessible figure for young Indians. But curiously, in faraway America, Gandhiji is an action hero. “He [Gandhiji] is somebody whom I find a lot of inspiration in,” Obama told the schoolchildren.
“He inspired Dr. King [Martin Luther], so if it hadn’t been for the non-violent movement in India, you might not have seen the same non-violent movement for civil rights here in the United States.”
Obama has said he kept a picture of Gandhiji in his Senate office to remind himself that power comes from the people. In India, the only vivid picture of Gandhiji was presented in a Munnabhai movie. Gandhigiri became fashionable because not only did it seem potent, but also unmistakably cool.
Gandhigiri helps a goon, played by Sanjay Dutt, find redemption using only compassion, strength, integrity and commonsense. Such attributes belong to humans, and when humans develop unfailing reserves of those attributes, they become heroes. In real life, we have trapped Gandhiji into worship, and forgotten that he was a hero. It is easier to perform rituals than to emulate heroism.
(The writer is a journalist)
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